Honeywell QuietSet HY-280 Tower Fan Review

The Honeywell QuietSet Whole Room Tower Fan has a couple of features a lot of other tower fans do not have which sets it apart from its competitors below we will go into whether or not these features are of use or not.

The fan has a low price tag and if you get a unit that doesn’t give you any issues you will likely end up with a decent fan for the price. But the downfall of having a cheap fan is the quality is not going to be of the highest caliber.

If you are buying this one from Amazon then it is very important to note that there are two models for sale and the HY-280 is the BLACK one. This is what this review covers. Many purchasers have ended up with the different fans they wanted when they purchased this so it is something worth noting.

Also worth noting is that Honeywell does not make their own fans but a company called Kaz actually manufactures the fans for Honeywell. Though not uncommon it is interesting as some consumers have had to deal with Kaz themselves rather than with Honeywell.

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Assembly

When your Honeywell QuietSet fan arrives you will have about a 10-15 minute setup constructing the pedestal base. Luckily you won’t require any tools.

It will pay to read the instructions while making the base up as while it’s not difficult to set up, it does warrant reading the instructions first. The tower fan comes with 5 parts and with screws. You will need to secure the fan to the pedestal.

This is where the tower fan will get its height from. Putting the base together is quite simple but you will need to get the order of the assembly correct. To do this you slide the cord through the middle of the two pedestal pieces first and then you can connect the pedestal.

After that, you will screw the pedestal into the base unit. Then you will add the base sides to the unit and fasten it with the screws supplied. There is a small hole for the cord to feed out on the base so the unit is not resting on the cord.

All in all the process is quite simple it will just take a little bit of time to put together. The parts of the base are plastic and don’t have the most sturdy feel to them.

Speeds

This is one of the things that separates the Honeywell QuietSet whole-room tower fan from the bulk of the other tower fans.

Most of the others come with only 3 air speeds to choose from however the Honeywell QuietSet comes with 8. As far as wind speeds on tower fans go this is close to the top of the line with only the Dyson AM07 having more speeds with 10.

The fact there are so many options is great for a number of reasons. It will obviously give you more options when it comes to airflow, but it also gives you more options at night if you are trying to sleep when it comes to noise.

It can be tough to find a balance between airflow and noise at night when you are trying to sleep so having more than the 3 options helps immensely.

The 8 speeds you have to choose from are

• Sleep
• Whisper
• Calm
• White noise
• Relax
• Refresh
• Cool
• Power cool

One nitpick with having the 8 speeds on this fan is that in order to get to your desired setting you have to cycle through all the other settings to get there. So that can mean a whole lot of button pressing!

One thing a number of customers have complained about is the brightness of the control panel at night. This is not uncommon to this tower fan, however. This makes things hard to sleep at night when the light brightens up the room. People are forced to place things over the top of the lights to dim the lighting.

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Airflow

This fan is advertised as being 110 CFM.

Cord management

This fan has a wee contraption on the back of the fan to enable you to better control any excess cord length you may have if your fan is close to the power outlet.

Thermostat

Having a thermostat function is what sets the Honeywell HY-280 apart from nearly all its competition. There are not many tower fans that have this function. It is thought that given tower fans do not necessarily cool your room that a thermostat might be rendered useless. For the most part this kind of rings true but at least you have something in your room to give you the temperature.

Effectively on the fan, you can set the temperature you want to keep your room at. Before being able to set, the fan will display the current room temperature for 3 seconds and then you will be able to input your desired temperature.

The fan will move between fan speed settings in order to reach the desired temperature and once it has it will turn itself off. Should the temperature go above the specified temperature, then the fan turns itself back on and gets back to its work.

If you have set the timer then this will override any thermostat settings.

Unfortunately, if you want to keep your thermostat settings you will have to leave the fan on as once turned off all your settings are removed and set to default.

Timers

The timer on the Honeywell Whole Room Tower Fan is a fairly standard timer compared to other tower fans. It has 4 settings you can choose from. 1, 2, 4, and 8 hours are the options you have to automatically turn your fan off.

Remote Control

The remote control takes 2 AAA batteries to function. It has 6 buttons on the fan of which you can control 4 functions:

• Power
• Oscillation
• Thermostat
• Wind speed

What is not ideal is when controlling the temperature there is no feature on the remote to see the current value, so you will need to be able to see the display panel on the unit to know what input you have.

This goes for the wind speed setting too. You will either need to see the display or just cycle through and do things by air.

Like most tower fans the QuietSet has a wee storage facility at the back of the fan.

Unfortunately, the remote control does not have the timer feature, so you can only control the timer from the base.

Cleaning

Like most other tower fans the cleaning instructions recommended by Honeywell are to use a soft cloth only to gently wipe the outer surfaces of the fan clean.

To get between the grills and fan blade area, it is recommended to use a pipe cleaner, flexible dust wand, vacuum cleaner, or compressed air to remove any buildup of dust.

There is no removable grate so you cannot get right in amongst the internals to clean any dust.

Safety fuse & polarized plug

This fan features a fused safety plug which is designed to cut off electric current to the fan if an electrical fault occurs. In the event of a fault, you may be required to replace the fuse in order for the fan to work again. As well as the safety plug it employs a polarized plug for extra safety.
This fan is not energy-star rated.

Warranty

The Honeywell QuietSet tower fan comes with a 1-year limited warranty. This is the same coverage most tower fans get however other companies do have more. The Dyson Am07 has a 3-year warranty and Vornado tower fans have by far the most coverage with 5 years.

Construction

This fan is cheap and unfortunately, it seems to show through with the quality of the build of this fan. The materials have a cheap plastic feel and many of the consumer complaints we reviewed complained about the poor workmanship of elements of the fan.

Things developing noises, breaking down, going haywire, oscillation problems, and noises. While this obviously doesn’t happen to every fan I guess you have to expect for such a low price that the construction and materials may not be of the highest caliber.

Physical Specs

Price

The Honeywell QuietSet tower fan is one of the cheaper tower fan options out there and is comparable to the Lasko 2551 Wind Curve Platinum tower fan.

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Customer Reviews

With around 72% positive reviews on Amazon at the time of writing, there are a pretty reasonable among of happy purchasers of this fan.

The most criticism of this fan came from, like many other cheap tower fans, in regards to mechanical issues as mentioned above. Other minor niggles from consumers were the bright display light on the top of the fan.

The absence of the timer from the remote and somewhat unsteady base. The extra speeds were a big positive with the extra choice in wind speeds really sat well with purchasers.

Conclusion

One wonders whether more time could have been spent on quality construction and materials rather than the extra features. Actually, if we just looked at the features it has a bit more than your average fan.

Compare the Honeywell QuietSet to its competing brand counterpart, the Lasko Wind Curve Platinum it certainly has more mod cons. Not many have the thermostat and the 8 speeds are a lot more than the average three that most tower fans have.

But not unlike most other cheap tower fans, most complaints seem to be of malfunctions or issues related to cheap materials or construction. Are the extra features worth purchasing this fan over another?

The thermostat is a fairly negligible feature, the 8 speeds are great but a pain to cycle through. Not a bad fan but for the same price it may be worth going for the simpler Lasko 2551.